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Reddit Still Hosts Links to Russian Propaganda Sites

20 points by shaki-dora 9y ago

sincerely 9y ago
I can’t convince myself that this is a problem. How much US propaganda is linked to on reddit?
prepend 9y ago
“The most popular articles posted by these accounts racked up dozens of comments and hundreds of upvotes, ” So what? It seems like this is a pretty small about of interaction. Hundreds of upvotes is nothing especially if you are troll powered as many of those are probably fake. The whole point of Reddit (and many other sites) is that there’s lots of noise and junk and it gets filtered out by community. Asking why there are crappy articles on it allowed is odd. Russian trolls get to post junk just as much as Coca Cola and Disney and all the other organized AstroTurf social media campaigns. Is the change here to create a ban list of every troll and potential troll and stop them shitposting?
- amastilovic 9y ago
  The desired change is most probably to enable banning "trolls" and then slowly update the definition of a troll so they could ban wrongthink.
  - prepend 9y ago
    Isn’t it settled though that banning trolls doesn’t accomplish the intended purpose of stopping bad conversations? If the intention is to ban wrongthink, wouldn’t society be improved by banning Coke for example since their trolls (ads) lead to increased obesity?
    - amastilovic 9y ago
      I think "trolls" are absolutely necessary and wouldn't support banning any of them. I see I got downvoted (probably by someone who identifies themselves with the current propaganda cycle) but I'm pretty sure I'm correct in thinking that companies supposedly offering salvation from the trolls are really doing it to open the doors for much broader censorship. It's a typical playbook, invent a fictitious enemy and then offer censorship tools to be accepted by general public. Once that happens, the criteria slowly and quietly converts into something much more sinister. Communists have been doing it for decades.
trendia 9y ago
If you want to see evidence of corporate propaganda on Reddit, see www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate They definitely have some false positives, but they also have examples of absolutely ridiculous and obvious campaigns
darepublic 9y ago
Last time I created a throw away account on reddit the recommended subreddits for me were r/communism101, r/fuckthealtright, r/communism, r/completeanarchy and a subreddit on crypto.
- sincerely 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure the recommended subreddits when you make a new account are based on your browser's reddit activity.

20 points by shaki-dora 9y ago

I can’t convince myself that this is a problem. How much US propaganda is linked to on reddit?

“The most popular articles posted by these accounts racked up dozens of comments and hundreds of upvotes, ” So what? It seems like this is a pretty small about of interaction. Hundreds of upvotes is nothing especially if you are troll powered as many of those are probably fake. The whole point of Reddit (and many other sites) is that there’s lots of noise and junk and it gets filtered out by community. Asking why there are crappy articles on it allowed is odd. Russian trolls get to post junk just as much as Coca Cola and Disney and all the other organized AstroTurf social media campaigns. Is the change here to create a ban list of every troll and potential troll and stop them shitposting?

amastilovic 9y ago
The desired change is most probably to enable banning "trolls" and then slowly update the definition of a troll so they could ban wrongthink.
- prepend 9y ago
  Isn’t it settled though that banning trolls doesn’t accomplish the intended purpose of stopping bad conversations? If the intention is to ban wrongthink, wouldn’t society be improved by banning Coke for example since their trolls (ads) lead to increased obesity?
  - amastilovic 9y ago
    I think "trolls" are absolutely necessary and wouldn't support banning any of them. I see I got downvoted (probably by someone who identifies themselves with the current propaganda cycle) but I'm pretty sure I'm correct in thinking that companies supposedly offering salvation from the trolls are really doing it to open the doors for much broader censorship. It's a typical playbook, invent a fictitious enemy and then offer censorship tools to be accepted by general public. Once that happens, the criteria slowly and quietly converts into something much more sinister. Communists have been doing it for decades.

trendia 9y ago

If you want to see evidence of corporate propaganda on Reddit, see www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate They definitely have some false positives, but they also have examples of absolutely ridiculous and obvious campaigns

darepublic 9y ago

Last time I created a throw away account on reddit the recommended subreddits for me were r/communism101, r/fuckthealtright, r/communism, r/completeanarchy and a subreddit on crypto.

sincerely 9y ago
I'm pretty sure the recommended subreddits when you make a new account are based on your browser's reddit activity.